Third Chances - Chapter 14
Rob
I caught up to James right before he got to the front desk. "What's up?"
James winced when he heard me. "Nothing. I just forgot my keycard and I need to get back in our room."
"I thought you were getting a drink?"
"I think I'm just going to take a nap instead."
"Okay. Well, I have my key. I need to go grab a shirt anyway. I'll let you in our room."
James looked at the front desk and then back at me. "Yeah, thanks." He shoved his hands into his pockets as he joined me. We walked in silence toward the elevator. When we got in, he leaned against the wall and looked down at the ground.
"What's really bothering you?" I finally asked, breaking the silence.
James shook his head. It looked like he wanted to talk, or at least like he needed to. But he didn't say anything.
"You can tell me you know."
"I'm just...I feel like I can't give her enough. I'm not enough."
"What are you talking about? Penny loves you. Are you getting cold feet? Is that what this is?"
"No." He pressed his lips together. "No," he said again. "I want to marry her. That's all I want."
"Then what's wrong?"
"I just told you. I'm not enough."
"Not enough what?"
"I can't give her what she wants."
"What are you talking about? You've given her everything she could have possibly dreamed of. It's like a fucking Disney story."
"Not that stuff. She's never cared about my money. It's one of the reasons I fell in love with her in the first place."
I didn't say anything. I knew that. I knew how important it was for James to separate his personal relationships from money.
My mother had ingrained in our heads this fucked up idea that no one would ever love us for any reason besides for our net worth.
Probably because that was why my parents got married.
But it was all bullshit. Just because she was cold and heartless didn't mean all women were.
Maybe James was more jaded than me though, because he had been forced to marry the troll, Isabella.
I couldn't even imagine what it must have felt like to live that lie.
James shook his head. "She wants a family."
"And she's getting one. I'm the best brother ever."
James laughed. "And she loves you, you know that.
But Mom and Dad refuse to get to know her.
They're not even coming to the wedding. She keeps telling me that it's okay.
That you and Jen and our friends are enough.
That they're all the family she needs. But I can see it in her eyes.
She's hurt that they won't come, that they won't even try to get to know her.
And I can't do anything about it. I can't fix it. It kills me that I can't fix it."
I didn't really know what to say. I hadn't realized how upset he was about our parents not coming to his wedding. It was fucked up, but I thought that he had stopped caring about their opinion when he filed to divorce Isabella.
"And Penny's fucking best friend has chosen now of all times to fight with her.
She's not even speaking to her, and she's her maid of honor.
Who the fuck does that? And it kills me that I'm not with her right now, because I know that she needs me.
I'm supposed to be her rock. I'm not supposed to just disappear without saying goodbye.
Especially now. She told me that she wasn't good at handling change.
And I just kept adding fuel to the flame.
I forced her to take my internship. And I bought that new apartment without asking her.
She was right, it was too much change all at once.
It stressed her out. I don't know why I kept pushing things.
I just wanted to start our lives together. " He paused and took a breath.
I had never heard him ramble like this.
"We're getting married. She's going to be my wife.
I have to protect her. I have to be there for her.
She wants to have kids. Did you know that?
I can't have kids. I'm just going to screw them up like our parents screwed us up.
Fuck." He ran his hand through his hair and looked back down at the floor.
He wasn't suffering from withdrawal. He wasn't getting cold feet.
He was just stressed out. Really stressed out.
And the funniest thing about that was that we were here for his bachelor party.
He was the one that was supposed to be relaxing.
I knew my brother really well. And despite what he might say, he definitely needed a hug right now.
I put my arms around him before he could even tell what was going on. I didn't even care how unmanly it was. Sometimes guys just needed a bro hug.
The elevator doors opened.
"Oh, excuse me," some guy said. "I'll just wait for the next one." He stepped back and looked the other way as the doors closed again.
I laughed and patted James' back. "That guy totally thought we were a gay couple."
James laughed. One of his real laughs, not the fake ones that I knew so well. I was pretty sure it was the first time he had really laughed since we had kidnapped him for this trip. And it was contagious. I started laughing too.
I released him from my hug. "You're just stressed out, man. Penny doesn't care about all the noise. She just cares about you."
James shook his head. "I know. But we're not married yet. I still have time to lose her."
My big brother always gave off the vibe that he was as tough as nails. But he was actually a big softy. "You're not going to lose her. Trust me, if she was going to leave you, she would have done it already."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"You're stubborn, obsessive, controlling, hot-tempered, possessive, jealous, egotistical, and you're probably extremely selfish in bed. She already knows all that and she's decided to stick around anyway."
"I don't think you know me at all."
I laughed and slapped his back as the elevator doors opened on the top floor.
"And despite all those terrible qualities, you're going to be a great dad. Because you'll be motivated to be better than our parents...who are clearly the worst. Besides, you're going to have kids whether you want to or not. I can't wait to be an uncle."
He laughed.
"Here's what we're going to do," I said as I opened up the door to our room.
"You're going to get a drink from the mini bar and head back down to the pool to work on your tan.
You have to look amazing when you get back to New York, since apparently Penny is thinking about leaving you.
And you're going to spend the rest of this weekend relaxing and not stressing over anything.
At this rate, you're going to have a heart attack before you turn thirty.
You need to calm the fuck down and stop worrying about everything. "
"Easier said than done." He flopped down on the bottom of his bed. He still seemed to be acting weird.
"Is there anything else? Maybe I should have used my snuggling card with you instead of Daphne."
James laughed and sat up. "I'm probably reading into nothing, but the past few weeks, Penny's been asking me a lot of questions.
Like if I wish I was still a professor. It's like she's been trying to find a reason that I'm unhappy.
It's unnerving. I don't know why she can't see how happy I am; how happy she makes me. "
"Well, Professor Hunter, maybe because you're a ball of stress and hold it all in until you explode in an elevator and make strangers think we're gay."
He laughed. "Don't call me that."
"What's your deal anyway? You love when Penny calls you that. I saw your face when those girls called you Professor Hunter. It was like you hated it."
"I like when Penny calls me that. Not you. And not random people. I'm not a professor anymore. It's in the past. I want to keep it that way. I want to move forward. I just want Penny and me to be a normal couple."
"Normalcy is overrated."
He nodded. "I guess. But really, do you think Penny's getting cold feet?"
"No. Didn't I just tell you to stop worrying?" I pulled a small bottle of vodka out of the fridge and tossed it at him.
He looked at the bottle and then dropped it on the bed.
"You do realize that I thought you were suffering from withdrawal? You scared the shit out of me. I thought you were actually addicted to Penny. You know, like...unhealthily. I thought I was going to have to have an intervention and make you break up with her before you ruined both your lives."
James lowered his eyebrows. "I'm not addicted to her. Not like that, anyway."
"I know." And I did. He loved Penny unconditionally.
It was such a deep connection. They could share one look and know what the other was thinking.
I was almost certain that Penny knew that James was stressed out.
Just like he knew that she was still upset about our parents not coming to their wedding.
They were the perfect couple. There were pictures of them all over the internet tagged with #relationshipgoals. It was puke worthy.
I grabbed a shirt out of my suitcase and pulled it on.
I wasn't sure I cared as much about anyone as James cared about Penny.
The thought was a little chilling. James and my sister, Jen, were probably the highest on my list. I loved them unconditionally too.
But of course, that was different. Penny was at the top too.
I loved Penny. But as much as I enjoyed teasing her, I would never actually want to steal her away from James.
She was perfect for him. She wasn't perfect for me.
Shit. Am I jealous of their relationship?
I shook the thought away. I wasn't jealous of James and Penny.
I didn't want to be stressed out over a stupid wedding.
The way it was tearing James up made it even more unappealing.
If the stuff with my parents was bothering him, it would probably bother me whenever I got married too.
Whenever, way way in the future that was.
"I have to go. Promise you'll head back down to the pool?"
"I'll come back down with you."
"Okay, but I'm not going back to the pool."
"Where are you going?"
"I want to surprise Daphne."
James smiled. "You should invite her to the wedding."
"Why would I do that? We just met. That would be ridiculously inappropriate."
"More inappropriate than screwing around with her all weekend and never talking to her again?"
"Absolutely."
"You should think about it."
"Just because you convinced Mason to settle down with Bee doesn't mean you can do it with me. I bet you're just trying to get me to date someone so that I have to stop flirting with Penny."
"I'm not trying to convince you to do anything. By the way, Penny told me that you called her your little sister the other day to cheer her up. That was really nice. It meant a lot to her."
"Yeah, yeah. Did she also tell you that I jerked off to the thought of her in the shower that night?"
James frowned.
"I didn't think so. I'm disgusting, remember? Don't start getting any ideas in your head." I wasn't sure if I said that for him or myself. Because now that the idea of me being jealous of my brother getting married was in my head, I was having a hard time forgetting about it.